This increase follows Attorney General Jeff Sessions' April 6, 2018 announcement of a "zero-tolerance policy" for those who "illegally cross over our border." An inevitable consequence of prosecuting everyone caught illegally entering this country, the Administration originally claimed, were family separations.

While the zero-tolerance policy has resulted in an increase in criminal prosecutions, these were still at most only 32 percent of total Border Patrol apprehensions of adults in May. It was also far short of the 24,465 adults apprehended without children that month. Thus, the so-called zero-tolerance policy didn't as a practical matter eliminate prosecutorial discretion. CBP personnel had to choose which individuals among those apprehended to refer to federal prosecutors. Accordingly, the stated justification for family separations does not explain why this Administration chose to prosecute parents with children over prosecuting adults without children who were apprehended in even larger numbers.

Criminal prosecutions were up in some southwest border areas, and down in others. The most prosecutions during May occurred in the Southern District of Texas - with double the number that had occurred during April. The Southern District of California also recorded an increase.

In contrast, the number of recorded prosecutions actually fell in the Western District of Texas in May. May totals were also somewhat lower in Arizona and New Mexico than April prosecution numbers.

To read the full report, including detailed figures on criminal prosecutions for each of the five southwest border districts over the last decade along with recent trends for border areas within each district, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/520/

In addition to these most recent overall figures, TRAC continues to offer free monthly reports on selected government agencies such as the FBI, ATF, DHS and the IRS. TRAC's reports also monitor program categories such as official corruption, drugs, weapons, white collar crime and terrorism. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through May 2018, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/bulletins/

Even more detailed criminal enforcement information for the period from FY 1986 through May 2018 is available to TRACFed subscribers via the Express and Going Deeper tools. etc.

If you want to be sure to receive notifications whenever updated data become available, sign up at:

http://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1&list=imm

or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/tracreports

TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the U.S. federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to:

http://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl